Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:40 pm

The praise that 5e is getting for it's sexual progressiveness got me thinking. While I'm now about 98% sure that WotC/Hasbro okayed it for marketing reasons, it is very much a good thing for rpgs to start taking this tack. Given my own interest in gender and sex politics, I wrote up a quick mini-essay for Tides of Shadow, assuming I ever get the system pounded out to be published. Please tell me what you guys think, whether it gets too high concept, too preachy, too confused, or even just outright wrong. I live in Sacramento, so it's not like I exactly have my finger on the pulse of gender and sex politics. All I can do is look at records of said pulse and check my own.

Gender in the Shadow
It is a fact of reality that gender is not the binary that so many think it. Many real, living people identify in some way as something other than their physical sex. To be clear, sex refers to the physical, biological aspects of what people refer to as gender, it covers primary sex characteristics (such as the specific nature of a person’s genitals) and secondary sex characteristics (such as facial hair in men and higher body fat percentages in women). Gender, however, is typically more accurately used to refer to the mental and social components. Many people in our real world have a gender identity that is different than their apparent sex. There’s a lot of possible reasons for this, ranging from hormones to culture to the people they grew up around, and as this is neither a sociology text, nor written by a sociologist, I can only recommend you google “trans politics,” “trans identity,” transgenderism, and the like.
This is no less true for people from the Shadow. All sapient creatures have social constructs, and they will usually have gender roles and politics. Just because their gender roles and politics are in contrast with those of modern western society does not mean they’re not there, not important, or even wrong. Indeed, there are a lot of potentially very interesting roleplaying opportunities in the cultures that come through the Shadow.

Gnolls, for example, similar as they are to hyenas, have very, very different gender roles and sexual politics from modern western civilization—they are gynarchal (meaning female dominated), and males are actually on average smaller and less strong than females. In all the ways that modern western society emphasizes males and treats the masculine as the norm, gnolls would likely emphasize and normalize the feminine. Of course, the fact that they’re anthropoid hyenas means that “feminine” for a gnoll includes a lot of sexual and social aggression (connect to footnote about hyena sexual politics) that western society would attribute to males. Needless to say, it is very easy to have a conflict between a modern western human and a female gnoll Shadowkin.

Add to this the fact that magic exists in worlds across the Shadow, and gender politics and issues are at once made more complicated, and far more simple. Polymorph any object is a very quick, easy, and permanent form of sexual reassignment surgery which many real transgendered people would pay every dollar they had if it were available to them. Even for those who cannot cast the spell themselves or afford to have it cast for them, there exist spells such as alter self which can be used to make oneself as they wish to be for trips out of the house or whenever they wish.

As far as Tides of Shadow as a game is concerned, however, it is sufficient to say that a character may be male, female, pre or post procedure trans male or female, or even just “queer,” meaning that they don’t categorize so easily, or don’t wish to tie themselves down to one identity, and their actual sex may be male, female, intersex, or even hermaphrodite (though hermaphroditism is extremely rare in reality, most commonly manifesting as essentially mismatched primary and secondary sex characteristics, quite apart from how fiction often portrays it. “True” hermaphroditism in humans is very rare, but, in Tides of Shadow, may be more common as the result of magic, however).

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:32 pm

I am myself no expert, but I have been told that hermaphrodite is often an offensive term to use, and that you should basically stick to using the term intersex in all cases that aren't clearly male or female.

On a non-gender note, I can't tell from the section given here if Shadows is supposed to be a Tome off-shoot or a modern fantasy like After Sundown or what.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:56 pm

Hrm. The problem is that it's also a technical term, and a term that is accurately used in a lot of fantasy. I may switch from a term to a simple description, I'll have to think on it. I may also just add a line clarifying that when I say hermaphrodite, I mean an actual biological hermaphrodite, and that psuedohermaphroditism is a genuine medical term.

Huh. That's a tricky one. Damn.

I guess it's been a bit since I talked about it, but the idea of Tides of Shadow is an urban fantasy game where there is (at least) the mortal world and "D&DLand," and they float in a quasi-oceanic space known as the Shadow. It is totally not uncommon for shit to get caught in the currents and tides and wash up in the other world. So, basically "It's the world as we know it, but elves and dorfs and trolls keep showing up too. Just they can't be seen as such unless you already know about them."

One specific idea that was mentioned by someone was that when a creature washed up on a reality shore, they were "normalized," so they would appear to fit into the world they showed up. The example was an ogre washing up in New York in modern clothing, with a wallet and a license that said he was irish immigrant Peter O'gre, and he knew he was a plumber.

Basically I'm playing "Lets fix a game" with d20 Modern and the Urban Arcana/Shadow Chasers campaign style. Shadowkin refers to any creature that is an immigrant from the Shadow.

edit: here we go- "Elves Pop Up in Times Square: Wat do?"

and this is the post about "normalization:" http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=391655#391655

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:38 am

From both a sensitivity standpoint and a technical accuracy standpoint, intersex should be used for humans with ambiguous genitalia. Hermaphrodite should be reserved for beings with a two complete and functioning sets of both male and female sex organs either due to natural biology or magical intervention.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:44 am

That's essentially how I was trying to go about it, yeah. Maybe I should switch some of the uses of "hermaphroditism" to a quick spiel on "psuedohermaphroditism" and maybe say that's it's probably better to just call that intersex.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:56 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Given my own interest in gender and sex politics, I wrote up a quick mini-essay for Tides of Shadow, assuming I ever get the system pounded out to be published. Please tell me what you guys think,

At the risk of blundering into a minefield....I think you need to re-assess. From an editorial perspective what is this sort of essay adding to the RPG you are trying to write? To me this looks more like an English comp paper providing an overview of real-world gender spectrum / identity than any sort of interesting resource for an RPG. And while that's potentially a useful public service, it seems potentially out of place in discussing an urban fantasy RPG.

To me, the most interesting and game relevant part is where you mention a couple of spells that can be used to gender swap or genderblend and some likely uses of these spells by trans / genderqueer / whateverthisweek's-newly-more-appropriate-term individuals. You could start over and discuss things like the use of Disguise Self in drag performances, or how Alter Self's duration means that it's favored by those who want to maintain a fluid gender and disdained by those who want to completely swap gender in favor of more traditional surgery or higher level Polymorph spells.

Or you could take a tack where genderqueer roles are much more common in the game for magical or metaphysical reasons. This requires shifting some setting assumptions and having a world that differs a bit more from the one the players are most familiar with, but it's doable. Maybe those who reject societal gender roles are more likely to reject other parts of Normality and see Shadow creatures, and therefore more likely to be able to learn the setting's magics.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:24 am

Yeah, I'd say an straightforward observation on complexity and culture, then a sentence or two magic and you're pretty much done. A paragraph on hyena sex/gender is derailing (and going to get you 'oh that furry game' tag pretty quick) and the aside to hermaphrodites (true, otherwise or whatever) kind of wanders off topic and confuses itself.

I wouldn't call 5e's bit progressive, exactly, but the 'these things exist and are normal' is probably the limit of what you want to do before you hit the train to preachy town.

That said, if the game's focus is on exploring culture and sexuality, then, yeah, it needs to be a bit bigger. If its about shooting fools in the face because a car chase/gunfight with ogres on the Golden Gate Bridge is awesome, it's a little extraneous.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:12 am

This is going to sound really really insensitive, but honestly there are no winners and only losers when you try to get into the nitty gritty of gender identification terminology. There is no term that people use for self identification that other people don't find offensive. There is no pejorative term that is not used by some for self identification. The old adage that you can't please all of the people all of the time applies in force to gender identity terminology, and since you're talking about peoples' personal gender identification people are legitimately personally offended when they happen to be some of the people who aren't pleased at any particular time.

I'm pretty sure I actually drove Ceiling Cat away from this board by stubbornly insisting that gender reassignment surgery was a cosmetic surgery that didn't change your internal biology and also had an unfortunately high rate of complications and patient dissatisfaction. I'm sorry about that, but the unfortunate medical reality is that gender reassignment surgery that we can do right now is actually not that great in a lot of ways. And while that would seem to be generally uncontroversial, it was apparently important enough to her identity as a human being that this option was magic that merely discussing the medical realities of what current procedures were capable of was considered a friendship ending offense.

There is nothing you can say or do that will make it better. No matter how many letters you add to LGBT, there will always be someone who feels left out and someone who feels that one of the letters you used stands for something that offends them. The fact that something is technically true is no defense at all; because many peoples' personal gender identities importantly hinge on believing something counterfactual.

People have personally defined gender identities, and that's fine. But if you get any more specific than that you're walking into a god damn mine field where anything at all could be the equivalent of shitting on their Koran.

-Username17

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:14 am

Uh, why is this necessary again? Unless you're introducing rules unique to transgender experiences, this really has no place in an RPG. Shit, if you're going to include trans-sexuality why not include a little essay on how some people like to put on animal costumes when they have consensual sex and that's a perfectly valid life choice they can make. Or write a paragraph about how some people choke themselves while masturbating- you can bring up your suffocation rules when you do so!

In other words: don't put this shit in an actual game. Nobody fucking cares about your sexuality at the game table, and unless you're playing a weird fucking game nobody really cares about your character's sexuality either. There's a goddamn reason almost every game table has a 'fade to black' response whenever sex comes up.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:49 am

Oh, yes. I'll take a thousand 'and the next morning' transitions over a single hamfisted personal fantasy described between a fixated player and a reluctant gm. Or vice versa.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 8:04 am

Well spongeknight, there's this concept called Media Representation, and it matters quite a bit to a lot of people. Not all the people, but enough of them. Usually it's to do with racial issues or women's issues, but (as you might expect) the more minority a group is the more they'll give a shit about someone saying "hey these people exist too you might want to think about them some of the time". You might even say that there's a bit of an inverse relation between how much media representation individuals get and how much they care about getting it.

Like, the very fact that people were practically jizzing their pants over what is essentially a throw-away paragraph that's not brought up anywhere else in the DnD5e book should tell you that people will be happy to have these things touched on and acknowledged. You don't need to include actual descriptions of non-straights and/or non-binaries having sex any more than you need to have actual descriptions of straight people having sex. It can just affect who they take upstairs at the tavern, or rescue from a dragon, or whatever, and then you still say "and the next morning". Fuck, it can even just affect how the character feels about themselves without them ever hooking up with anyone ever. Honestly I'm shocked I had to write this paragraph down, because it should be entirely obvious, but I guess not.

Now, Frank has a point; a strong point. Basically the only ways to do it are "point it out and say you're not an expert and get yelled at some" or "claim to know anything at all and get yelled at even more", but if you can stand for a few folks being upset at you and then a net positive number of people being happy that you did a thing, it's very much worth considering.

But... maybe specifically on the subject of Gnolls and Hyenas and all that... just pick some other non-patriarchal group maybe.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 9:07 am

Josh_Kablack wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:Given my own interest in gender and sex politics, I wrote up a quick mini-essay for Tides of Shadow, assuming I ever get the system pounded out to be published. Please tell me what you guys think,
At the risk of blundering into a minefield....I think you need to re-assess. From an editorial perspective what is this sort of essay adding to the RPG you are trying to write? To me this looks more like an English comp paper providing an overview of real-world gender spectrum / identity than any sort of interesting resource for an RPG. And while that's potentially a useful public service, it seems potentially out of place in discussing an urban fantasy RPG.

Voss wrote:Yeah, I'd say an straightforward observation on complexity and culture, then a sentence or two magic and you're pretty much done. A paragraph on hyena sex/gender is derailing (and going to get you 'oh that furry game' tag pretty quick) and the aside to hermaphrodites (true, otherwise or whatever) kind of wanders off topic and confuses itself.

Yeah, good points. I think when you're close to a matter like this, it's hard to get exactly right what needs to be said and what is extraneous. Doubly so for me, because I do that shit anyway. (plus add my whole limited understanding of what people consider TMI or interesting and general tendency to be very open and verbose about shit I care about).

Frank wrote:stuff about inherent ambiguity of this specific subject

Oh, fucking definitely. I remember the debate Crissa and I got into about whether or not "trap" was offensive. I'm still amused that a, so far as I know, cis, lesbian would not take at face value the fact that an at least partially femme identifying trans person was saying they personally did not see it as personally insulting.

Then again, I'm weird about what I get insulted by.

SRS stuff

as I understand it, and this is not my personal view, there are people who are so hugely disphoric that they need that cosmetic procedure for their own mental well being. It's kind of like how reconstructive face surgery is very much a cosmetic procedure (generally speaking) but you're not about to tell a person who had their face melted by acid that they don't need it if they think it will make them feel better. I personally am not particularly disphoric, and while I may transition at some point, I will be keeping my barrel filler, and really I'll just wait and hope that one of these days that we have cosmetic gene splicing of adults or replacement bodies or such that allow me to gain a truly hermaphroditic body. Hell, it's not like I want a womb so I can bare a child, I just want more mushy giblets to have fun with. So that can totally wait. But I can sympathize with Ceiling Cat's stance too, and it's unfortunate she stopped posting.

No matter how many letters you add to LGBT

I'm actually totally against adding letters, because it's just absurd now. I believe people are seriously using LGBTQIA and longer, and I want us to just simplify down to "Alts" for "people of alternate sexualities, sexes and gender identities" or just fucking add the other 19 letters already and just call ourselves "The Alphabets."

@Spongeknight-

Yes, and lets leave a gender space off the character sheet all together! In fact, we don't really need spaces for skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, or nationality either! Height and weight can stay, because those determine things like what kind of hallway you can be railroaded through and whether your party member can lift you, but all this meaningless description is stupid and unnecessary! Character gender just leads to players trying to bang bar wenches so I have to start brawls and drop rocks to get them back to the beautiful dungeon I labouRED OVER 140 HOURS MAKING THIS WEEK!! IT HAS THESE AWESOME TRICK MUSHROOM GUYS THAT WILL WRECK THE PCS FACESIFTHEYDONTTRYTHEDIPLOMACYINEVE RLETTHEMUSEANDTRYTOJUSTSWEJFDSAOFEJAGSDFJHGKLDSFNJG KLDF'VJNKLDF;AVJNKL;DFSNVKL'DFJVKLEFSDAJKLVDFV NJKLDZJVN KLDVN KLDFVNKL;DFNVKLDFNJVKL;DFNGKLDFAKL;VDSFNK LVJNDKLVNJDKL;VNDF JKL;VNJKLDFGNKL;EGNJKLERJHGODSBVJIODF SNOEFNDO;SNEFJKGHGDDI JGHERUIGHNFDILSAFGENHUW FGIUFEHUIF BNEIUFGEDHUIFGVUBJEFUIPGYE WRHUIGHERWUIVTNYWEUI VTYGWERUIT VGN45UITYE UIERWHW UITO YW48THUIERGHEJIEFUPGY 45UIPGY UIGOPWERHUIGYW4HW89T 0YYHYIWERGH EUIG HWERUI TYWEHUIOO GH WERUIGH WERUIPGWHERUIGFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FUUUUUUUUUIKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK KKKKKKKKKKKKKKSGDFJGHSNUIGORNHIP

...

Sorry, I think I channeled Gary Gygax there.

More relevantly, and seriously, first, there's a huge fucking difference between the fact that I identify as both male and female, and the fact that some people get off on cramming their own heads up their asses (note- I find it amazing you can type while you're indulging in said fetish. Really, quite impressive). Secondly, there is also a huge fucking difference between identifying as a real fucking gender that just happens to not match your physical sex characteristics, and identifying as, say, a gigantic walking smegma encrusted cock. I would not suggest writing your personal smegma-cock otherkin status on your character sheet, seems like it's really just inviting trouble, especially if you encounter the dreaded Vagina Dentata monster in game.

Thirdly, if you get to write down "male" on the character sheet of your proctocephalic fetish character, then I damned well get to write "genderqueer" or "genderfluid" down on mine. I'm fairly certain "dude what has a penis and wants to be pretty" is a far more legitimate "niche" character than your obvious analogue, though of course, far be it for me to disparage your fetish for storing your head in your ass. I myself like a bit of anal, but I just not that flexible.

Oh, and fourthly, what Lokathor said about representation.

Yeah, I think I'm going to take another swing at this spiel. I've at least learned by this point in my life that I usually need a good two or three passes of getting something like this done before it's really doing what I intend.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 12:48 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:
No matter how many letters you add to LGBT
I'm actually totally against adding letters, because it's just absurd now. I believe people are seriously using LGBTQIA and longer, and I want us to just simplify down to "Alts" for "people of alternate sexualities, sexes and gender identities" or just fucking add the other 19 letters already and just call ourselves "The Alphabets."

Yeah, only the genders and sexual preferences I deem to be important need to be mentioned explicitly. Fuck the rest, just put them in some all inclusive group, so we can keep ignoring them, nobody cares about them anyway.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 1:10 pm

Not even remotely what I meant, ishy. It's a perception thing. The Cis and Heterosexual people already see us as wanting to be special snowflakes. Using an initialism that includes half the fucking alphabet will just worsen that. Alt is a good all inclusive term. It literally means "alternative sexuality/gender/lifestyle." Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual Queer Intersex Asexual is about the limit of what's an acceptable list name, but it sure as hell doesn't cover everyone. What about Demisexuals? So it has to be LGBTQIAD. What about Greysexuals? So then it should be LGBTQIADGr. Oh, and of course, we should be inclusive by putting everyone in the term, I mean, Pansexuals have it harder than even bisexuals, because even our fellow LGBTQIADGrs in the LGBTQIADGrP often think we're making shit up.

And of course, lets not forget Polysexuals, since not everyone who's attracted to more than the ends of the spectrum is attracted to everything in between, so really it should be LGBTQIADGrPaPo.

Do you see what I'm saying? It's fucking absurd to spellout the specific one or two letter code for every single fucking identity under the umbrella. Can we either just cut to the chase, or simplify down to a term that will actually mean something to people who aren't already familiar with it?

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 1:37 pm

There's also the problem of some transgendered and/or sexual people not wanting to be labelled any differently from cisgendered people.

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 3:28 pm

just fucking add the other 19 letters already and just call ourselves "The Alphabets."

I'm in. Leave the binary terms for the Westboro Baptist Church. Eveybody else on the planet is now part of "The Alphabets" and has to spend an unhealthy amount of time listening to Imagine.

Side note: nobody has made a ten hour loop of that for me to amusingly link to? YouTube, I am disappoint.

animea90 · Post by **animea90** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:06 pm

Voss wrote:Yeah, I'd say an straightforward observation on complexity and culture, then a sentence or two magic and you're pretty much done. A paragraph on hyena sex/gender is derailing (and going to get you 'oh that furry game' tag pretty quick) and the aside to hermaphrodites (true, otherwise or whatever) kind of wanders off topic and confuses itself.

I wouldn't call 5e's bit progressive, exactly, but the 'these things exist and are normal' is probably the limit of what you want to do before you hit the train to preachy town.

That said, if the game's focus is on exploring culture and sexuality, then, yeah, it needs to be a bit bigger. If its about shooting fools in the face because a car chase/gunfight with ogres on the Golden Gate Bridge is awesome, it's a little extraneous.

To add, most players prefer to keep sex and gender issues out of their tabletop games and discussion of them is a waste of page space.

Even in a game with cis gendered characters, the gender of a character is rarely going to be relevant past knowing what pronoun to use. Before getting into the issue, I would ask myself how this would be relevant to the player's games.

Although you could argue that, even if it doesn't matter to the game, including it will attract progressive types and you make enough money off that to justify inclusion.

animea90 · Post by **animea90** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:11 pm

spongeknight wrote:Uh, why is this necessary again? Unless you're introducing rules unique to transgender experiences, this really has no place in an RPG. Shit, if you're going to include trans-sexuality why not include a little essay on how some people like to put on animal costumes when they have consensual sex and that's a perfectly valid life choice they can make. Or write a paragraph about how some people choke themselves while masturbating- you can bring up your suffocation rules when you do so!

In other words: don't put this shit in an actual game. Nobody fucking cares about your sexuality at the game table, and unless you're playing a weird fucking game nobody really cares about your character's sexuality either. There's a goddamn reason almost every game table has a 'fade to black' response whenever sex comes up.

Because adding a few paragraphs on gender identities will net you a decent bit of money and publicity off social justice warriors. No, it doesn't matter to the game at all, but it does influence your bottom line.

Its the same reason to include a gay character, black character, disabled character etc even if it doesn't matter to your game. Some of your customers love this stuff.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:14 pm

Too long, too specific.

Fantasy gender can run from androgynous elves to femdom drow to bee people with a queen, her demi-female worker and warrior castes, and a handful of flying male gametes. Back to dwarf women who keep their beards less tidy because they just aren't as into all that fru-fru as the men, too busy mining for children.

Hell, even a mention of historical male humans and their puffy wigs, silk frills, tight stockings, and perfumes. Their fashion wasn't always dictated by the needs of trench warfare and company stores. Nor were women expected to remain forever sixteen, England is not on it's first Queen, and so on. Metrosexuals, or business women in pant suits isn't at all new or unusual.

Kilts! Extremely manly, fiercely so. Also worn by school girls. Possibly elves. Fantasy art is more bland and normative in it's fashion than even a single century of human variation. Hell, 3e shows less variation than our own modern world, Gencon has more variety, at least 1st edition had the races prefer different colour garments.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:11 pm

animea90 wrote:Because adding a few paragraphs on gender identities will net you a decent bit of money and publicity off social justice warriors. No, it doesn't matter to the game at all, but it does influence your bottom line.

I'd like to see data backing that claim up. I have grave doubts that you see any noticeable increase in income from it.

On the high end according to the studies I've looked at, you're talking about maybe 7% of the US population that actually identifies as LGB and less than 1% as some version of T.

You also have to consider the people who are now not going to touch your game because you did go there.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:24 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Not even remotely what I meant, ishy. It's a perception thing. The Cis and Heterosexual people already see us as wanting to be special snowflakes. Using an initialism that includes half the fucking alphabet will just worsen that. Alt is a good all inclusive term. It literally means "alternative sexuality/gender/lifestyle." Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual Queer Intersex Asexual is about the limit of what's an acceptable list name, but it sure as hell doesn't cover everyone. What about Demisexuals? So it has to be LGBTQIAD. What about Greysexuals? So then it should be LGBTQIADGr. Oh, and of course, we should be inclusive by putting everyone in the term, I mean, Pansexuals have it harder than even bisexuals, because even our fellow LGBTQIADGrs in the LGBTQIADGrP often think we're making shit up.

I had my first real world (well, for the real world variant known as a college campus) encounter with this about 6 weeks ago when I was picking up my 'yet another diploma.' I actually stopped and stared at the sign in my attempt to decipher it, and the only reason I could figure out any meaning at all was the LGBT at the front. Whatever points they gained from being inclusive were lost in the gibber of alphabet code incoherence.

The fact that the school is exclusively women only at the undergraduate level added a level of irony and incoherence to the whole thing, because I have no idea if the college would even admit someone with a more complex gender status.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:41 pm

Here's my own quick stab at a short and sweet "gender can be M, F or a bunch of other letters blurb" that would go in a chargen section

Name _____

Write a name for your character here. This can be any name you would like - it can be a real world name or a completely new fantasy name never used in the real world. The only requirement is that you can write it down and that players at the table can speak it aloud. It's strongly suggested, but not absolutely required that gaming groups have some common conventions for naming as that helps to set the tone for the overall game. If a couple of players choose period and cultural appropriate names researched from actual history and a couple other players choose names just to be funny, that's a sign that players are expecting different things from the game and should try to work together a bit more to avoid ruining each other's fun.

Gender _____

Pick a gender for your character. This can be any gender you want. It can be Male or Female or it can be something else. Note that in the real world there are many people who identify as something other than simply Male or Female and more than you might think who have physiology which is not clearly in either category. In a fantasy world with cultures of plant-people, sentient rocks, hivemind bee-people, amorphous shapeshifters and body-jumping psychic entities, gender can be a whole lot more varied than the binary gender often erroneously assumed in the contemporary western world of reality. Sometimes thinking in depth about alternate physiologies, fantastic modes of reproduction and the cultures that could result from such can provide a unique hook to build a character around.

Whatever you choose for your character's gender, it has no mechanical effect on your character's stats or abilities, although it may change what other characters in the setting expect of your character

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:07 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:@Spongeknight-

Yes, and lets leave a gender space off the character sheet all together! In fact, we don't really need spaces for skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, or nationality either!

So you're telling me that, to be inclusive of every human being on
Earth, you are going to put shout-outs in your game that reminds everyone of the following minority groups who would like representation:

Little people
Trans-species
Ethnic minorities
Non-gendered/asexuals
Albinos
Chinese nationalists in Taiwan
ect.

Because if you don't plan on including everyone in your little crusade you're just being a fucking hypocrite, picking the one thing you care about and telling every other group to fuck off. Here's a goddamn line you can put in your game: "You can be whatever the fuck you want to be in your game of make-believe, whether that includes gender identity, race, or unusual physical characteristics."

Prak_Anima wrote:More relevantly, and seriously, first, there's a huge fucking difference between the fact that I identify as both male and female, and the fact that some people get off on cramming their own heads up their asses (note- I find it amazing you can type while you're indulging in said fetish. Really, quite impressive). Secondly, there is also a huge fucking difference between identifying as a real fucking gender that just happens to not match your physical sex characteristics, and identifying as, say, a gigantic walking smegma encrusted cock. I would not suggest writing your personal smegma-cock otherkin status on your character sheet, seems like it's really just inviting trouble, especially if you encounter the dreaded Vagina Dentata monster in game.

Uh, no, there's no difference. Unless you plan on forcing the game to detail how you fuck someone it doesn't matter who you fuck. You or your character can identify as any gender you want. I don't care, nobody at your table fucking cares. If your dude wants to wear dresses and identify as a woman, that's fucking fine. If your chick identifies as a man and is attracted to women, you can roll to seduce the barmaid and no one is going to give half a shit.

Prak_Anima wrote:Thirdly, if you get to write down "male" on the character sheet of your proctocephalic fetish character, then I damned well get to write "genderqueer" or "genderfluid" down on mine. I'm fairly certain "dude what has a penis and wants to be pretty" is a far more legitimate "niche" character than your obvious analogue, though of course, far be it for me to disparage your fetish for storing your head in your ass. I myself like a bit of anal, but I just not that flexible.

The last time I checked character sheets had a space to fill in your gender, not a "male/female circle one" option. You can put whatever the fuck you want down on there. But you know what? There has not been one single time that one of the people I have played with announced their character's sexual identity to anyone at the table. You can roleplay your character without shouting "My character's a guy but I identify as a woman!" Just play that shit. I doubt anyone would actually notice your fucking character's sexuality in a roleplaying game about killing monsters and stealing their stuff, unless you actively tried to force it into the narrative.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:12 pm

If you reorder LGBTQIAP+ and aren't too particular about it you can spell QUILTBAG.

But the most common "don't add more letters to this term" one I've seen is just GSM for "Gender/Sexual Minorities".

Previn wrote:I'd like to see data backing that claim up. I have grave doubts that you see any noticeable increase in income from it.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/study ... ith-248757

I imagine that a similar effect, though at a smaller scale as you mention, would be in play.

You also have to consider the people who are now not going to touch your game because you did go there.

Fuck 'em.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Jul 26, 2014 7:28 pm

I think the point spongeknight is trying to make is that you don't need that essay in a RPG book. You can just say: "With the presence of new intelligent species and abundance of body altering magic gender became less important than not being a talking mantis. PCs may identify as whatever they want to be." I could be wrong though.

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Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow

Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow

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Re: Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow

Re: Sex and Gender in Tides of Shadow